#spoliarium

Grabe the feeling! I'm walking through this huge, grand museum hall, surrounded by all these international paintings pero honestly, they don't really move me, di ba? They're just pretty. But then, I reach this massive, dramatic work and everything in the hall just stops. That painting is Juan Luna's The Spoliarium. It doesn't just hang there... it literally grabs your soul and demands your attention. That’s why I stop there every single time.

What makes it so incredibly powerful? It’s the scene itself. You see this huge, dark basement... the spoliarium, where dead and dying gladiators are being dragged off the floor. They are stripped of their armor and their dignity. The light only focuses on their brutal defeat, and in the shadows, you see the indifferent crowd and the women weeping for their loss. It’s an overwhelming visual of human suffering and systemic cruelty. Luna painted ancient Rome pero he was really showing the world the exploitation and oppression faced by the Filipino people. It’s a timeless scream against injustice.

But the reason it feels so relevant and urgent today is because it perfectly captures the entire cycle of betrayal faced by our citizens, especially during disasters like a typhoon. This is why the painting will never be outdated!

We can't just talk about corruption after the flood... we need to see the corruption that causes the flood in the first place. The defeat of those gladiators didn't start in that dark room, it started when the whole system was designed to fail them.

Ganoon din sa Pilipinas. The suffering starts with the missing funds that were budgeted for flood control, the substandard projects and the poor planning that leaves communities completely exposed. These funds are the first spoils taken! The people who fail to plan are the silent executioners. When the typhoon hits, the victims are already set up for failure by the system itself.

Then, the actual tragedy happens. The typhoon victims... our modern-day fallen gladiators, lose everything. And what is the final, cruel act? Hala! The corruption continues by taking the relief goods, stealing the aid money and selling the donated materials for profit. They are stripping the victims of their last hope for survival. The Spoliarium shows us that the powerful will always find a way to exploit the weak, both by setting them up for failure and by profiting from their pain.

© Paolo Dala

Spoliarium Juan Luna (1884) National Museum (Manila, Philippines)

At Ngayon 'Di Pa Rin Alam Kung Ba't Tayo Nandito

“Spoliarium” is a famous artwork by the Filipino painter Juan Luna in 1884. The “spoliarium” was the place where Roman gladiators were stripped of their armor after defeat in the amphitheatre. “Luna’s painting reflects the cultural and political context of the Philippines during its colonial period. It was created while the Philippines was under Spanish rule, and Luna used it as a way to criticize the oppressive colonial government and the exploitation of the Filipino people. The painting expresses Luna's strong sense of nationalism and his desire for freedom and justice for his fellow Filipinos. “Spoliarium” played a role in inspiring Filipinos to stand up against the political oppression imposed by their Spanish colonizers.

SPOLIARIUM (1884) by JUAN LUNA

The painting shows a gladiatorial match with a backdrop of blood and gore. The word SPOLIARIUM comes from the LATIN word SPOLIARIUM, which means the basement of the ROMAN COLOSSEUM, where the gladiators who have fallen and are dying are thrown and stripped of their belongings.

The paintings depict how gladiators are simply thrown on the ground after their death for the amusement of ROME, and their belongings are simply taken away from them while their family members weep and grieve. JUAN LUNA uses this as a tool to unconsciously distinguish the sufferings of the FILIPINOS from those of the SPANIARDS, as they also treat them in a similar manner to the ROMAN GLADIATORS.

In this art, the Formal Elements are first, the lines that create the various images in the painting, and second, the shape, which is geometrical with the various objects in the painting, as well as Organic with the shapes of the people within the painting, and Volume, which is the mass of the current figures within the painting.